Blue Ice
by Casscaro
Summary: Petrograd (St. Petersburg) January 1917. The Chronicles tell us that Spike, a.k.a. William the Bloody, was responsible for the death of two slayers. The Chronicles don't know everything.


It feels almost too cold for snow, although the taste of it is sharp in the air and the heavy clouds in the dark sky lower under its weight. The wind whips down from the northeast, snarling along the waterways with teeth of ice crystals that flay the skin and blur the vision. She pulls the fur collar of her coat higher and walks quickly and purposefully, crunching on the frozen slush covering the ground, eyes fixed ahead. She turns into Nevsky Prospect, jewel-bright with lights in the grey winter's night, weaving between the late evening crowds of well-to-do Russians who favour the fashionable street. In truth the crowds are sparser now, the rich hiding away from the long, cold winter and the rumblings of revolt. But the burgeoning prospect of trouble draws others into the city, some moving away from the war in the west where even they began to feel uncomfortable, some leaving the thin pickings of famine-blighted countryside, others drawn from God knows where. And these particular incomers meant more work for her. She sighs and wraps her arms around herself, hugging what little warmth she can to her. She's tired and hungry and she really, _really_ doesn't want to be out tonight, but she walks on, because this is what she does: this is who she is; this, she has begun to feel, is _all_ she is.

She finds the bar she's been directed to in a side street just off the main prospect, takes a steadying breath and opens the door. Warm, moist air heavy with the smell of cigarette smoke and alcohol and wet wool greets her as she steps inside. She takes off her hat and runs her fingers through her hair, lifting short, soft black curls into a halo around her pale face. Grey eyes scan the dingy room and find him, hunched over the bar, alone among the groups of drinkers finding solace in the temporary oblivion of vodka. Despite the ubiquity of the heavy military greatcoat she recognises him; even among so much hunger his shines out, feral and unrelenting. She frowns. Too many people. She needs to get him alone – and she needs a drink.

She signals to the barman, points out a bottle and sits down next to the stranger. "Another refugee from the front?" she asks in Russian, topping up his empty glass and filling her own.

He shakes his head and picks up his glass, tilting it to watch the light break on the oily liquid. "Sorry, pet, don't speak the lingo." He turns to look at her. "So if it's conversation you're after…"

She meets his eyes for the first time and a sudden rush of memory hits her strongly enough to take her breath away, to freeze her in a moment.

 _She's a child in the crystal-cold air, dazzled by bright white snow and azure sky, high on the glacier. She stands at the edge of a crevasse, a bottomless, slanting scar in the whiteness, and peers down into its depths. Blue ice, deep and beautiful, shading from lightest cerulean to deepest ultramarine and beyond to indigo-black, colour so intense in the arctic sun it takes her breath away. She moves closer to the powdered edge of the chasm, mesmerised by the pure intensity of the colour, holds her breath and raises her arms and imagines falling forever through the ice, wrapped in sapphire…_

His eyes are blue ice. Beautiful. Deadly.

He's watching her curiously, head tilted. She shakes away the memory and picks up her glass. "English?" She downs the neat spirit without flinching and raises an eyebrow at him. "A long way from home." He gives a non-committal grunt and swallows the shot of vodka straight and she tops up their glasses. He may have a vampire's capacity for alcohol, but she was raised on this vodka and she's not afraid to match him. "You are alone?"

"Not any more," he says, smiling lazily at her. She thinks – _ah, but that's a smile to break a heart_ : seductive, inviting. She's not fooled, although she pretends to be, looking down at her glass with a shy half-smile. "You speak English well." His voice is rich with possibilities.

"Ach, not so well," she shakes her head. "But I would like to learn."

"Maybe I could teach you." The smile becomes more intimate.

She looks up at him under lowered lashes. "I'm sure you can teach me much," she says and he raises an eyebrow, touches the tip of his tongue to his teeth. She draws a quick breath at an unexpected tug of _something_ in her gut – disgust, she tells herself, emptying her glass again to drown a confusion of other possibilities. She raises the empty glass to him, and he grins at the implied challenge, drains his own and fills them both again.

"Like a woman who can handle her drink," he raises his glass in salute.

"It keeps out the cold." She shrugs. "You do not choose a good time to visit my city. Winter days are dark. In the summer it is more beautiful."

He shakes his head. "Not here for the Grand Tour. Besides, I'm more your…" he grins, "…creature of the night."

She suppresses a snort of laughter. "Then even in these times, I'm sure my city has much to offer you." She watches his profile as he drinks, finds her gaze drawn to the full curve of his lips as he puts them to the glass, wonders, despite herself, if they'd feel as soft as they looked, imagines the taste of vodka lingering on his tongue…

He turns his head to find her watching him, reads the look and raises an eyebrow. "Maybe you could show me – what you have to offer." His words are heavy with implication.

She flushes and looks down quickly, angry at herself, at her reaction, at the heat in her gut. It had clearly been very much too long between men if this _creature_ can raise such feelings. She forces a soft laugh. "I'm thinking you are a very bad man."

"And your mother told you never to talk to bad men," he purrs.

"My mother warned me of many things." She looks up and is frozen again in the blue ice of his eyes.

"And you always heed what mama says?" He's leaning closer and she can feel the breath of his words on her cheek.

"Not always." She tries to look away, but she can't free herself.

"Maybe you should…" He tilts his head and his eyes travel slowly and deliberately to her lips, then back to catch hers again. The slow, seductive smile is back and she feels her pulse quicken in response.

"Maybe I like a little bad in my men…" Her voice is little more than a whisper.

"Maybe you do." He reaches over to brush away a lock of hair from her face, easy and intimate.

His hand touches her skin and suddenly the pictures come, unexpected and brutal. They called it her Gift, her mother and grandmother, the Gift of seeing, of empathy and foresight. It had become her curse. It's unpredictable, uncontrollable - mostly; all too often the knowing comes when she least wants it, when what she sees wrenches at her soul. Like now. She gasps and he pulls back his hand, frowning, and the shifting kaleidoscope of images in her mind fade, leaving a lingering sense of terror, of profound darkness and shattering light, of something hidden. She fights back a wave of nausea. "Too much vodka," she laughs unsteadily. "Perhaps I should go." He's watching her with those too blue eyes, waiting, and she feels something she's not felt with his kind for years – fear. She wants to run, to leave him, to flee into the bitter night and stop this, with him, now; but she fights down the panic and hangs on to what she is, pulls the steel of her slayerhood close. "Come with me?" she asks, standing. His answering shrug says he'd expected nothing else.

They walk quickly through the busy streets, his arm heavy around her shoulders, his stride loose and easy. The wind has dropped and snow is falling now, thick heavy flakes of white that settle quietly on roads and footpaths, muffling sound and confusing distance. She glances up at him and he smiles, a cap of snow haloing the soft brown curls of his hair in the light of the streetlamp; it's the smile of a predator and despite the warmth of the vodka coursing through her veins she shivers. The streets grow narrower, quieter. She can feel the building tension in him, senses the hunger, bides her time.

In a deserted alleyway he pushes her against the wall, his mouth hard on hers, one hand pushing aside fur and cloth to find her, cold fire on the warmth of her skin. Through the harshness of the vodka she can taste old blood on his breath, the flavour of sin and death. She shudders against him even as her traitorous mouth responds to his - _disgusting, evil monster_ \- tells herself he's everything she despises, everything she hates. But his body against hers feels good, and _alive_ , and it's been so long and he's so beautiful and suddenly - _ah, God_ \- she wants him so badly, wants to take him now, hard against the wall, a quick cold fuck in a flurry of fur and frost and forgetfulness. She wraps her arms around his neck, pulls herself up to bind her legs around his hips, opens herself to the feel, taste, sense of his demon, lets it call to the shadows in her mind and set them free. The thought hits her, unbidden and sudden:

 _Is this the day? Is today the day I die?_.

She tries to care but his hands are on her ass, pressing her against him, his mouth and tongue clashing with hers, and she's losing it…

 _Is he death?_

…losing what she is in the furnace of this desperate need.

 _Is this what it's like?_

She closes her eyes and her mind and lets herself fall.

The feel of fangs against her tongue snaps her back, instinct cutting through the black fire of desire, lashing out while her body cries against it, howling in frustration at the loss of him. He's surprised when she pushes him back, surprised by her strength and the suddenness of her rejection. His reactions are slowed by the raw spirit in his gut, and before he has the chance to recover, she has him unconscious, sprawled in the snow.

She looks down at him, her breath gasping whitely into the cold air, her heart thundering unevenly with the adrenalin rush of fear and passion and bewilderment. She closes her eyes and slides her hand into one of the deep pockets of her coat to find the smooth, warm surface of the stake hidden there, to seek reassurance and purpose from her weapon, to remind herself who she is. Gradually she feels her heart rate calm and settle, feels control return to shaking limbs.

She drags him into a doorway, hidden from any curious passers-by. She knows what she should do, knows her duty, but first… first she needs to see, to understand what she glimpsed in that first confused contact. She has a way, one way to call the Gift to her, and, although using it touches a darkness in her she fears, she fears what she sensed in him more. She takes her small silver knife from the pocket of her coat, pushes back the heavy sleeve of his coat and draws the blade hard across his wrist. The blood wells, black against his night-paled skin. She hesitates for a moment then puts her mouth to the cut.

The visions come fast, shattering through her brain, jumbled images of fear and death wrenching at her heart and soul, setting the slayer in her howling for revenge for what had been and what was to be. But beyond it is more – _so much more._ Her eyes fly open, fix on the pale perfection of his face. She reaches a finger to trace the line of his lips, to trail across the sharp edge of a cheekbone, stunned by what she's sensed.

СУДЬБА.

Destiny.

He has a destiny. He will _become…_ and what he will become is beyond her understanding. Her finger moves to the scar slicing through his eyebrow and she pulls back her hand as if scalded at the flash of pain deep in her core. _Killer!_ So much death written in him, so much horror. The stake is in her hand and against his chest before she knows it, but she pauses despite herself, her breath rasping in her throat. _Destiny_ – the sense of it resonates through her. He groans and stirs, briefly opens unfocussed blue eyes to meet hers in puzzlement before unconsciousness pulls him back under. She closes her eyes and hangs her head. _Killer… saviour_. She can't, has no right… despite everything he is, despite the promise of a hundred plus years of horror, what he will become is worth so very much more. _Ah, but to get there…_ With a sudden cry she hurls the stake away to clatter uselessly in the dark recesses of the alley. She looks at him again through tears of despair, and then she's vomiting blood and vodka on the unyielding ground, retching until her vision swims and her guts ache. She pulls herself to her feet and leaves him without looking back.

She stands on the delicate span of the Lion Bridge and leans against the balustrade, staring down into the canal. Ice like flat steel clings to its banks, clusters in brittle shards around the supports of the bridge, closing slowly and relentlessly on the remaining narrow channel of sluggish grey waters. The weight of what she'd seen flows through her, colder than the water, colder than the ice, sapping what little strength she has left.

She hopes with what's left of her heart that he will be able to bear it when his time comes, that he will be able to carry the burden of so much wrong and pain and death – because she can't bear that she's let it be, that she has to go against all that she is and let him go. She can't carry the weight of the knowledge of his sins.

Enough. She's had enough.

She's a child again, out on the glacier, hungry and tired and lost and alone and yearning for home and for peace. She closes her eyes, opens her arms and leans forward, and then she's falling, forever, through the blue ice of her memory.


End file.
